Page:Agastya in the Tamil land.djvu/26

Rh These tribes are referred to in the later epics and the Purāṇās as occupying the country to the South of the Vindhyas, beginning from a little to the north of the mouth of the Godāvarī in the east to the mouth of the Narmadā in the west. But this knowledge of a few tribes to the South-east of the Vindhya range on the part of the author of the Aitarēya Brāhmaṇa hymn does not count for much. For, Pāṇini, whose date on the most liberal calculation of Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar is taken to be 700 B. C, makes mention in his sūtras of Kacca, Avanti, Kōsala, Karūṣa, and Kaliṅga as the farthest countries in the South. Dr. Bhandarkar writes "Supposing that the non-occurrence of the name of any country farther south in Pāṇini's work is due to his not having known it, a circumstance, which looking to the many names of places in the North that he gives appears probable, the conclusion follows that in his time the Aryans were confined to the north of the Vindhya but